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With two World Wars? Dunno man. The 12th Century had the Crusaders to offer, but the scale? I'd need to see numbers.

Take our casualties in WWII compared to the Civil War - they're roughly the same in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of the US population, the latter was unquestionably more damaging to the citizenry than the former. In fact, you can combine both WWII and WWI casualties and they still don't remotely approach the Civil War numbers as a percentage.

Take our casualties in WWII compared to the Civil War - they're roughly the same in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of the US population, the latter was unquestionably more damaging to the citizenry than the former. In fact, you can combine both WWII and WWI casualties and they still don't remotely approach the Civil War numbers as a percentage.

Yeah, but pretty much every casualty in the Civil War was an American casualty.

Take our casualties in WWII compared to the Civil War - they're roughly the same in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of the US population, the latter was unquestionably more damaging to the citizenry than the former. In fact, you can combine both WWII and WWI casualties and they still don't remotely approach the Civil War numbers as a percentage.

Yeah, I would think that era had far, far more killing and mayhem than the last century.

I've said it before, and it's been stated by someone else, but what makes the Holocaust in particular stand out is that unlike most other genocides (which are about gaining or keeping power/resources), what the Nazis did was the end goal in and of itself. People can comprehend inhuman things done for some other goal, but when those things are the goal in and of themselves it becomes horrifying. Most people I know point to the Killing Fields of Pol Pot right after the Holocaust despite both of them being well outnumbered in the number of corpses by other events.

"Theory: The Phoenix doesn't corrupt the characters, it corrupts the authors." Gambit, King of Thieves

Take our casualties in WWII compared to the Civil War - they're roughly the same in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of the US population, the latter was unquestionably more damaging to the citizenry than the former. In fact, you can combine both WWII and WWI casualties and they still don't remotely approach the Civil War numbers as a percentage.

Part of this is also due to the massive population explosion the world has gone through in the past couple centuries.

in 1750 the global population was 700 million, hitting 1 billion for the first time in 1804 (1.2 billion in 1850), 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, and so on. But the population only grew from 200 million at the BC/AD flip to 275 million in the year 1000. So smaller total numbers in the past are likely to be larger percentages of the whole than larger total numbers are today.

"Theory: The Phoenix doesn't corrupt the characters, it corrupts the authors." Gambit, King of Thieves

I've said it before, and it's been stated by someone else, but what makes the Holocaust in particular stand out is that unlike most other genocides (which are about gaining or keeping power/resources), what the Nazis did was the end goal in and of itself. People can comprehend inhuman things done for some other goal, but when those things are the goal in and of themselves it becomes horrifying. Most people I know point to the Killing Fields of Pol Pot right after the Holocaust despite both of them being well outnumbered in the number of corpses by other events.

That I agree with, GL. The 20th century regrettably can't run away from that.

Part of this is also due to the massive population explosion the world has gone through in the past couple centuries.

in 1750 the global population was 700 million, hitting 1 billion for the first time in 1804 (1.2 billion in 1850), 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, and so on. But the population only grew from 200 million at the BC/AD flip to 275 million in the year 1000. So smaller total numbers in the past are likely to be larger percentages of the whole than larger total numbers are today.

Exactly right. The 20th century world population really stands out in comparison with earlier century totals.